Curry Soups - Thai Recipes

Tom-Yam is the famous Thai spicy soup, it's made with many different ingredients and this is one of the more obscure versions. It uses roe (the egg sack of a fish), I've used hake roe for this dish, but cod roe and salmon roe can also be used. The cod roe has a particularly nice pinkish colour when cooked ( Better Hake Fish Must Fresh ).

Tom yum is the traditional spicy Thai soup served in a tom-yum dish with a heater to keep it good and hot. It can be made with cheap simple ingredients, including this version, sardine tom-yum that gets it's flavors from nothing more complicated than tinned sardines.

This tom yum (Thai spicy soup) version is typical of the Northern provinces of Thailand. It is made with a slow boiled pork leg which makes the soup rich with meat juices. Like other 'soups' these are used as side dishes to rice, the guest spoons some of the soup from the shared plate onto their rice plate, and for this one, they take some of the soft pork meat.

A yellow curry soup from the south of Thailand featuring prawns or shrimp and bamboo as it's main ingredients. It is very typical of the southern provinces. In Thailand we use ready made curry pastes, which you can get from any Asian grocer.

'Tom Yum' is a spicy soup made from chilli, lime leaves and lemon juice, 'Gung' is the shrimp form of this soup. 'Tom Yum' is what people think of when they think of Thai food, it is the poster dish you must learn to cook to be able to say you cook Thai food. In the North East it's common to eat 'Tom Yum' made from chicken, it can also be made from pork or even fish.

Preparation
1. Slice the chicken breast.
2. Put galanga and lemon glass, into a sauce pan add water and bring to the boil
3. Pound the garlic and bird chillies in a mortar and put them into the pan.
4. When the water is boiling again, add the chicken.
5. Chop the green beans and corgettes into small bite sized pieces.
6. Add the green pepper corns, salt, fish sauce, red curry paste, tamarind water to the pot.
7. Cook for 3 minutes, then add the green bean and courgettes into the pot and cook for an additional 2 minutes then serve.

The soup is sour and spicy and provides the main flavours, the omelette adds the bulk to the meal. It's not at all unusual to eat combination dishes like omelette in soup in Thailand, and if you've ever had a dry omelette this dish makes a pleasant change! This dish is normally served with rice as a shared side dish. Guests take some of the soup and omelette and spoon it onto their rice.